Online-offline. ‘You are a small pixel of the whole screen’

A voracious reader and keen observer, Shanmugh Natarajan, Managing Director, Adobe India has an engineer’s curiosity about things which he brings to product development. The electronics and communications engineer from College of Engineering, Guindy, and MS in Computer Engineering from University of Texas, appears unfazed by rapid changes in technology – perhaps the comfort with speed comes from his early stints with startups in the US before joining Adobe in 2008. At Adobe he has been instrumental in leading product development for Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash and Lightroom. His take on:

I am more intrigued than worried. The engineer part of me is very excited about some of the ways the world has dramatically moved in the last five years – whether it is bots, or self-driving cars, or solar panels, or green energy – and the technological possibilities. I do wonder, though, what will happen to personal communication. At one level, we are over-communicating on WhatsApp groups but is it meaningful?

However, from a managerial perspective, I think the new ways of communication are more sophisticated channels. And if that is the frequency at which people want to listen, one has to adapt to that. There is certainly a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, breaking the barriers happening today.

Although there is a theory that there is no such thing as multi-tasking I do feel I am doing it. But for me, it’s the context-switching that is a challenge. You might be discussing an upcoming event at one meeting, and the very next meeting is about HR issues. When you are going between 15 different things the sudden switching of contexts and having to be prepared for all is the piece that is interesting to handle. How do you manage the right balance of being decisive and directional? To be on top of the game, you have to be always well prepared.

I read a lot of books, both on Kindle and in physical format. I travel a lot and get a lot of work done then but when that is out of the way, I love to observe people. Is this person having a good day? What could be his or her job? When you watch people, and see how life goes on, you realise that you are a small pixel of the whole screen. Otherwise you get too caught up in your executive decision-making.

I have just finished Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh and am halfway through Prisoner in His Own Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards and What History Left Unsaid . They are very different books, but what is common to both is the importance of empathy.

In Hit Refresh there’s a lot about how you have to listen to people, think through stuff from their perspectives to come to the same decision and destination. Usually people write books when they are done with something, but Nadella has written this when he is in the midst of it all. There is a little bit of vulnerability in the way he explains it, how he is still learning and some of the mistakes he has made, and how change at Microsoft is through collaboration.

He talks about why he bought LinkedIn, and also touches upon the business relationship with Adobe, and his negotiations with Apple. Somebody asks him will Microsoft buy Adobe and his answer is that at all times you have to look at it from the customer perspective. Do we provide value as one company or as partnering companies? His thoughts on AI and mobility are all fascinating. He says it’s not that the mobile market has taken over the world but it’s humans who have become more mobile.

The second book, Prisoner in his Own Palace , is based on the author’s interviews with the 12 security guards from the US army who were with Saddam Hussein when he was in jail to the time he was hanged. How their feelings towards one of the most reviled, sadistic leaders who deserves to be hanged change.

I enjoy reading autobiographies and books on people as you can be a fly on the wall and learn from their mistakes.